“This recording is a soothing, enveloping soundscape, ideal for quieting the mind and calming the body. The gentle ebb and flow of warm synthesizer textures are based on the rhythm of breathing, and entrains the listeners’ own respiration to its serene pace. It’s useful for setting a tone in a room, for aiding in meditation, for easing the transition to sleep, but it’s also sensually pleasing.”–Review by New Age Voice Magazine… More info / Buy for $13.99

In addition to several Projekt label restocks this week, we also have a few of their new ones recently added.

Steve Roach – Back to Life (2CD) (Projekt category)
(Price: $17.99, 2CD) New from Steve Roach and Projekt. Back to Life is a masterful expression drawing from the realm of Steve Roach’s mythic imagination: an enveloping experience of vast beauty and mystery. These harmonically rich, multi-layered pieces breathe with an elemental ebb and flow; with the 2-CD Back to Life, Steve achieves a new pinnacle within the ambient line of his oeuvre. The vitality on display within Back to Life owes a lot to Steve’s fresh approach towards production, sound and creative inspiration, the result of a period of personal changes and the yearning to forge deeper into his evolving sound. After “hitting the reset button on the foundation of my life beyond music,” Steve returned to the studio with a vibrant energy and focus. Even the most spiritual and mysterious creations are marked by sensations of weightlessness and an airy, shimmering translucent tonal palette. Although foremost a soundscape-oriented work, rhythmic pulses are frequently embedded deep into the structure of the surrounding atmospheres. Serene yet suspended drifts and propulsive dynamics merge into a single texture. Back to Life is a soundworld where rhythm and textures become one; the potential for complex interrelations has significantly increased…. More info / Buy 2CD for $17.99

Another restock from the Projekt label, re-activated on the Hypnos store.

Steve Roach/Byron Metcalf – The Serpent’s Lair (2CD) (Projekt category)
(Price: $17.99, 2CD) “Beginning as a collaboration between Roach and Metcalf, the music on The Serpent’s Lair evolved over the past year into an epic 2-CD set, augmented with a myriad of guests. For those familiar with Roach\’s work, this release has it all. Steve’s ultra-soundworlds, hybrid grooves and magical production combined with Byron\’s acoustic-organic tribal trance patterns set disk 1 in motion (in all directions). Aligning with themes of shamanic initiation found throughout the world, this disc is rooted in the organic . . . the earth . . . the ancestors . . . and the initiatory energy of focused transformational ritual practice which is integrated into the alchemical fire of psycho-spiritual death and rebirth. It is here that one is confronted with all the essential elements of danger and possibility.

Disk 2 — subtitled Offerings To The Underworld — is built around musical elements from disc 1, yet forges a sonic alchemy as it dives deeper. Thought at times rhythmic, the overall feeling is a floating, pulsing, breathing adventure through a system of underground rivers and caves, inspiring fantastic epsiodes along the way.

From the gene pool of possibilities, an evolutionary mandala emits the music of chance, while the electric body emerges intelligent and in an awakened state of eternal becoming. Forged out of the primordial protoplasm from which we crawled, Body Electric is a cyber-shamanistic celebration of man and machine.

Steve Roach and Vir Unis combine different rhythmic sensibilities and undeniable soundscapes in an alchemical reaction, creating an aural sensation that is surreal, hallucinogenic, but still organically human. Body Electric is a welcomed edition to the borderless world of new electronic music; this album is a zenith in bio-electronic body music, an evolutionary spark, a focused, high-energy trip of life-affirming, hyper-terrestrial grooves and sustained, soul-expanding sound worlds.”….. More info / Buy for $13.99

Steve Roach – Live at SoundQuest Fest
(Steve Roach category)
(Price: $13.99) Steve’s pinnacle performance from 2010’s SoundQuest Fest proved to be a real moment in time, and fortunately it was documented with a high resolution recording that places the listener front and center on that special night. Presented as a single CD, the first 74 minutes of the concert are experienced as it unfolded. Three distinct realms are seamlessly mapped out in this inspired set… (more/buy)